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“Planning to jack this up to a factor of ten or more,” Musk writes in the caption. Not quite sure what that means, but it sounds pretty badass. Jack away, Mr. M

“Planning to jack this up to a factor of ten or more,” Musk writes in the caption. Not quite sure what that means, but it sounds pretty badass. Jack away, Mr. Musk. Since this writer didn't bother doing any research before compiling Musk's Instagram posts, he's talking about the speed. He plans to run the boring machines much faster than has been done traditionally, and do so continuously. That's why he made the joke about the snail. Source: Musk's recent TED talk, which was pretty fun to watch.

MikusR 9y ago
It's silly to expect The Verge to do some actual fact checking/reporting.
- Strom 9y ago
  A reasonable apporach to take, but The Verge does have a few proper journalists left. That work isn't sustainable with their ad model though, so most of their content (like this article) is written by the classic clueless copy-paste blogspam people.
rory096 9y ago
Very sloppy article >This video shows the first in what Musk proposes to be a citywide network of underground tunnels That video is clearly in the Hyperloop competition track.
- dmix 9y ago
  The tunneling project is unrelated to Hyperloop (or at least not directly related). The new proposed project is in the IG video description: > This is a test run of our electric sled that would transport cars at 125 mph (200 km/h) through the tunnels, automatically switching from one tunnel to the next. Would mean Westwood to LAX in 5 mins. Musk released a video of a new concept of underground tunnels moving vehicles in cities this past month.
  - rory096 9y ago
    Regardless, that sled is in the mile-long track they built for the competition they held. They may not have depressurized it, however. The actual tunnel is just a starter currently, as Musk said. They're only now putting in the TBM.
    - Robotbeat 9y ago
      Right, both the sled and the track/tunnel are left over from the student Hyperloop competition. Hyperloop was kind of a brainstorm of Musk to get around traffic. But now that he has a track and a sled, he figured what the hey, don't even really need the vacuum part just for travel within a city. Just need to scale up a bit (maybe a factor of 3 in each dimension from the existing sled) and get good at tunneling and you can get fast travel within a spread-out city without bothering with the harder engineering problems that a Hyperloop would require. Hyperloop still a good idea for faster travel, but as far as an initial step, this tunnel system seems pretty straightforward (except for fast tunneling and permits for tunneling, etc) and gets Musk to his goal of getting around the traffic problems of LA.

MikusR 9y ago

It's silly to expect The Verge to do some actual fact checking/reporting.

Strom 9y ago
A reasonable apporach to take, but The Verge does have a few proper journalists left. That work isn't sustainable with their ad model though, so most of their content (like this article) is written by the classic clueless copy-paste blogspam people.

rory096 9y ago

Very sloppy article >This video shows the first in what Musk proposes to be a citywide network of underground tunnels That video is clearly in the Hyperloop competition track.

dmix 9y ago
The tunneling project is unrelated to Hyperloop (or at least not directly related). The new proposed project is in the IG video description: > This is a test run of our electric sled that would transport cars at 125 mph (200 km/h) through the tunnels, automatically switching from one tunnel to the next. Would mean Westwood to LAX in 5 mins. Musk released a video of a new concept of underground tunnels moving vehicles in cities this past month.
- rory096 9y ago
  Regardless, that sled is in the mile-long track they built for the competition they held. They may not have depressurized it, however. The actual tunnel is just a starter currently, as Musk said. They're only now putting in the TBM.
  - Robotbeat 9y ago
    Right, both the sled and the track/tunnel are left over from the student Hyperloop competition. Hyperloop was kind of a brainstorm of Musk to get around traffic. But now that he has a track and a sled, he figured what the hey, don't even really need the vacuum part just for travel within a city. Just need to scale up a bit (maybe a factor of 3 in each dimension from the existing sled) and get good at tunneling and you can get fast travel within a spread-out city without bothering with the harder engineering problems that a Hyperloop would require. Hyperloop still a good idea for faster travel, but as far as an initial step, this tunnel system seems pretty straightforward (except for fast tunneling and permits for tunneling, etc) and gets Musk to his goal of getting around the traffic problems of LA.